Office of International Education to host author and investigative journalist, Nov. 28

On Dec. 2, 1980, Sister Maura Clarke and three other women were stopped by El Salvador’s brutal US-trained National Guard at a checkpoint set specifically for them. The women, who’d been providing food, medicine, and rescue to peasants under assault from their government, had recently aroused suspicion at the highest levels of the Salvadoran armed forces. On that night in December, the National Guardsmen kidnapped, raped, and killed them. Their discarded bodies were left by the side of a remote dirt road.

News of their killings shocked the American public and international news community, setting off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. But as Congress held hearings, the State Department, CIA and FBI traded memos, and supporters held emotional memorial services, the women themselves became symbols, shorn of context and background: hapless victims. Markey will discuss this tragedy and its lasting impact.

Eileen Markey is the author of of A Radical Faith, the biography of Maryknoll Sister Maura Clarke, and an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice and America, among others. She has worked as a producer for WNYC New York Public Radio and lives in the Bronx with her husband and two sons.

This event is free and open to the public. More information can be found online.